Wrapped In Red
by LadySolitaire83
Summary: Molly and Sherlock's 'quality time' on Christmas Day is interrupted when she is called into work to autopsy a body. Meanwhile, he takes the case and investigates the murder. Will he solve the murder in time to give her an extra Christmas present? Written for 12 Days of Sherlolly 2017


**WRAPPED IN RED**

 **29 December 2017**

 **A/N: This fic is based on this prompt from a list on Tumblr: "PULLING YOU IN FOR A KISS WITH A SCARF".**

 **This is mostly canon-compliant, but Mary Watson lives in this slight AU. She and the rest of the Watsons don't appear, although they're mentioned a bunch of times.**

 **I don't think I've ever written a fic that starts in smut and ends in fluff. Which should explain why it took me forever to edit this. Hope y'all like this though!**

 **Rating is for the smut as well as some swearing.**

 **I own nothing. Everything belongs to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, BBC, Steven Moffat, and Mark Gatiss. If I owned Sherlock and Molly Hooper, then there would be a lot more Sherlolly in the show. All mistakes are mine. Reviews and constructive criticism are welcome.**

* * *

Molly heavily panted as she rode Sherlock in his armchair in front of the roaring fireplace. She rested her forehead against his, her heart racing as her walls fluttered around him. She caressed his neck and bare chest as she met his thrusts, smiling when she grazed his sensitive nipples and made him shiver. Tugging at the hair at the nape of his neck, she clenched around him and gasped out his name. She pulled away a bit, just in time to see him shut his eyes before pure bliss washed over his face and he threw his head back. _God, he's so beautiful when he comes._ She let her head fall on his chest, the exquisite sensations of her boyfriend finishing inside her causing her to moan––which quickly turned into soft giggles at the words she caught amidst his groans of pleasure.

She lifted her head and smirked at him. "I'm not a goddess, Sherlock," she said, her voice still hoarse from her passionate cries less than 30 seconds ago.

He opened his eyes and stared at her in confusion, his brain still rebooting. "Wh-what?"

She wiped away the beads of sweat that rolled down his forehead before kissing the furrows between his eyebrows. "When you came, you called me 'a fucking goddess'. By the way, have I ever told you how much hearing you swear turns me on?" Shaking her head to stop herself from going on a tangent about his sexy voice and his filthy mouth, she went on. "Anyway, like I said, I'm _not_ a goddess." She shrugged her shoulders. "I mean, you make me _feel_ like I am. But I'm really not," she said with a gentle shake of her head.

Chuckling, he pulled her closer until their chests were pressed together. "Is that your religious upbringing talking, or is it your humility?"

"Uh… both? Probably?" She planted a kiss on his lips before moving her mouth to his neck to suck on his pulse point.

"But you _are_ a goddess to me," he moaned. "When you showed up here last night with that red coat and that red dress, I wanted to kick everybody else out and tear your blasted clothes off you the moment we were alone. But," he added with a dramatic sigh, "I chose to wait and not ruin Christmas for our dear Rosie."

"Must be why you couldn't _wait_ to slam the door after John," she murmured against his skin. "You made Rosie cry, Sherlock." She glanced up at him and caught his remorseful wince before he rolled his eyes.

"But I apologised! I promise I'll make it up to Rosie next time."

She straightened up and gave him a tiny pout. "And you nearly ruined my pretty dress!" She lifted her hips to let him slip out of her.

"Sorry," he said as he squeezed her arse cheeks. "I'll buy you another dress."

"You mean, _Mycroft_ 's credit card will buy me another dress," she replied with an amused eye-roll. She laughed when he only winked at her. "But I've worn the dress a couple of times and the coat multiple times around you. What's so different this time?" She returned her attention to his neck, intent on giving him another love bite.

"I don't know," he replied with a shrug. "But I rarely ever lie to you, especially when I'm in the throes of pleasure. And you, Molly Hooper, looked like a _fucking goddess_." With a curse, he gently pushed her shoulder away, effectively pulling her lips off his neck, and tenderly cupped her face before crashing his mouth on hers. When he released her lips after a minute or so, he pulled away just enough to give her a sexy, smouldering look. "I am merely your humble servant."

She laughed. "Humble, my arse." Capturing his lips this time, she slipped her tongue inside and began to explore his mouth just as he liked.

A few minutes into their passionate snogging, a mobile phone began ringing. They both ignored it until it stopped. But it rang again as Sherlock moved his lips to her throat.

She glanced at the silent iPhone on the desk and, intently listening to her ringing phone, she tried to remember where she left it last night. "Perhaps I should get that," she remarked, grinding her damp core against his hardening length. "It might be work," she added, the sentence ending in a moan when his fingers began playing with her nipple.

He lifted his head from her clavicle and narrowed his eyes at her. "I thought you asked Stamford not to call you during your Christmas holidays."

"I did." She worried her bottom lip and gave him an uncertain look. "But I also told Dr Stamford to call me if it's _absolutely_ necessary."

His brows furrowed. "What could _possibly_ be more _necessary_ than spending Christmas Day with your naked boyfriend?" He gave a firm shake of his head. "Nothing—absolutely _nothing_ —is more important than making love in front of the fireplace, without fear that Mrs Hudson would barge in here with our meal or that Rosie would appear in the open doorway with her new favourite toy and catch us rutting like animals in heat!"

"Not even solving a case with your girlfriend on Christmas Day?" she retorted with a raised eyebrow.

"Perhaps," he said after a moment's consideration. "But what case could be interesting enough to interrupt our 'quality time,' as the Watsons call it?"

"Well, we'll never find out if we keep talking about it and I don't answer the phone."

The phone began ringing again, causing Sherlock to groan in displeasure. "Fine! But it'd better be a ten!"

Reluctantly rising from his lap, she scanned the sitting room until she spied her handbag behind John's armchair and grabbed her phone. She then ran to the bedroom in all her naked glory, leaving her boyfriend to (hopefully, temporarily) will his arousal away. Closing the door for extra privacy, she answered the call. "Merry Christmas, Dr Stamford!"

She returned to the sitting room a couple minutes later, now clad in only Sherlock's royal blue dressing gown. She clutched her phone as she stood in front of him. "Does a corpse of a naked man covered in bruises shaped like crosses sound like a ten to you?"

He thought about it for a minute before his eyes lit up. His shaft flopped about as he jumped up from his armchair, making Molly laugh. "Where did they find the body?"

"In front of the Alexander McQueen store on Savile Row. Dr Stamford happened to be there with his wife. Apparently, even the posh lot are curious about the murder."

"All right. Ring back Stamford and tell him we'll be there in about 20 minutes. Who's on the case? Is it Lestrade?"

She shook her head. "Greg and Sally are in Belfast to meet her folks. Don't you remember them leaving the party early? They went straight to Heathrow for their flight."

"Vaguely," he replied with a shrug of his shoulders. "Fine. What about Hopkins?"

"She's in Salerno with her girlfriend––well, fiancée, if she said yes last night––till after New Year's." Her text alert went off, prompting her to look at her phone. "Oh, Dr Stamford said that DI Gregson just arrived at the crime scene."

"All right then. I'll let him know that we're coming." He looked round the sitting room before grabbing his phone from the desk.

"Let's hope he doesn't resent you anymore for exposing his infidelity to his ex-wife," she remarked as she dialled Dr Stamford's number.

He began tapping at his phone, likely searching for Gregson's number. "Oh, he still does. I mean, it's been nearly a year." He rolled his eyes. "But he respects my genius regardless of his feelings towards me. So I just ignore his feeble attempts at snark. He's so easy to tune out anyway." He paused and lowered the hand holding his phone. "Um, Molly?"

With her phone pressed to her ear, she looked back at Sherlock. His face was scrunched up in thought, and it made her raise an eyebrow. "Yeah?"

"Do you think we have time for a quickie in the shower?"

Dr Stamford answered the phone before she could respond to that question.

* * *

Sensing that she was being watched, Molly lifted her head from the preliminary report that she was writing on her computer. She beamed when she saw Sherlock standing in her office doorway. "Oh, hello! Have you solved the case?" she asked as she pushed the sleeves of her pink-purple-and-blue striped jumper, which she found in her locker, up her forearms.

"Yep!" he replied, popping the 'p,' as he approached her. He bent down to kiss her on the lips before taking a seat on the edge of her desk. "It was fascinating, although it wasn't a ten. It wasn't even an eight."

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said with a sympathetic frown. "So did Mrs Burke kill her husband then?"

"Well, not exactly. It was more of a team-up between her and his eight mistresses." He nodded a few times at her shocked gasp. "They'd all just found out about each other and confronted him during their Christmas dinner. Now the idiot tried to defend his infidelity by blaming his behaviour on his wife's infertility and the other women's refusal to have his children. Apparently, all eight mistresses have decided not to bear anyone's children, let alone his, before they ever met him. So, once he found that out, he broke it off with the woman and moved on to somebody else."

"Which pissed them off," she remarked.

"Exactly. In her fury, Mrs Burke ordered him to take his clothes off or she and the mistresses would tear it off him. He thought he was going to be the centre of an orgy, so he complied. Then Mrs Burke, being the religious sort, grabbed the metal crucifix sitting on the mantel and just began hitting him with its smooth side."

"Oof!" she said, shaking her head and wincing. "He deserved it, but Jesus Christ is not a weapon." She grinned and stuck her tongue out at him, making him snort in laughter. "So did the women take turns hitting him with the crucifix, or does Mrs Burke own multiple crucifixes?"

"The former, obviously," he replied with an amused eye-roll. "At least some of them punched or kicked him while the others were striking him with the crucifix, which is consistent with his non-cross-shaped bruises."

She knitted her eyebrows together in thought. She turned to the computer and scrolled up her unfinished report. "But he died of blunt force trauma to the head. The dent in his head wasn't even in the form of a crucifix. It was shaped like a—"

"A cricket bat––Mr Burke's bat from his final match in uni, to be precise. It was leaning against the wall next to the fireplace and Mrs Burke's fingerprints were all over it, so she obviously put it there. But hers aren't the only prints on the handle; the other set of prints belongs to Ms Stanhope, one of the mistresses as well as a former member of the national women's cricket team. She wielded the fatal blow. They all got scared when he stopped moving and breathing, so they drove around London before they dumped his body in front of the Alexander McQueen store at 3am." He took a deep breath and gave Molly a small smile. "Shortly after I told Gregson who the killer was, Mrs Burke turned herself in and claimed responsibility for everything. Then Ms Stanhope walked in and did the same thing. But the rest of the women are nowhere to be found and have likely fled the city."

"I'm sure DI Gregson would find them," she said before resuming her work.

His scoff prompted her to glance up at him. "Maybe, maybe not. In my opinion, Mr Burke had it coming. Oh, John would be sorry that he missed this case!"

"Mary would love to hear about this case though," she said with a smirk. "Do you think she'd like a cricket bat for her next birthday?"

Sherlock beamed at her. "I'm sure she'd _love_ that as a birthday present. She does have better and more discreet ways to punish him if he ever strayed again. But it might be an excellent idea to keep it in the sitting room or their bedroom where it would easily remind him of the Burke case," he said, making her giggle.

"Hey, have you seen _Chicago_?" At the shake of his head, she grinned. "Wanna watch it tonight?"

"Is that a Christmas film? That doesn't sound like a Christmas film." He shrugged his shoulders without bothering to let her answer. "Will we be naked?" His eager expression reminded her of a puppy waiting for a delicious steak dinner or some yummy treats.

She gave him a cheeky look and giggled. "Maybe, maybe not."

He tilted his head towards her computer. "Are you done with the report?"

"Uh, almost. Just give me a couple of minutes." She typed some more before scrolling back up to read it through.

"You can proofread that later. I'm sure they'll understand if you don't send that until after Boxing Day."

She held up her finger, which instantly shut him up, and finished reading over her preliminary report. "Let me just send it to DI Gregson, print it out for the file, and log out. Dr Reyes would deal with the lab work and the final report tomorrow."

She smiled at him a couple of minutes later. "Done!" Standing up, she gathered her handbag and walked over to the coat rack by the door. "Ready to go home?" she asked as she set her handbag down on the floor and removed her lab coat.

He rose too and strolled towards the door. "Yours or mine?"

She thought about it as she tucked her long, colourful scarf around her neck. "Well, Mrs Hudson won't be back from her sister's till the 28th. But we don't want the Watsons to see something they can't unsee if we stay at your flat and they catch us making love in the sitting room if they happen to bring Harry over."

He rolled her eyes as he approached her. "I highly doubt that Rosie will remember seeing us naked. Mary, on the other hand, would just laugh and tease both of us about our sex life later. Harry will most likely hit on you after seeing you naked."

Giggling, she pulled on her red coat. "Obviously, I'm talking about John." She hoisted her handbag onto her shoulder.

He then took her hand, and they left her office. They walked in silence until they were outside Barts.

"Your flat?" he asked as he hailed a cab.

"Yes, please. I've got to feed Toby."

He nodded in agreement as they got in the cab. He quickly rattled off her address to the cabbie. "Oh, before I forget…" He reached into his coat pocket and removed a small box that was wrapped in shiny red paper and a glittery golden ribbon around it, making Molly's eyes widen. "Merry Christmas, Molly Hooper," he said as he handed it to her with a tender smile on his face.

"Hey, the red matches my coat!" She looked up at him with a sweet smile as her fingers toyed with the bow. "But you've already given me a pair of honeybee earrings, and I only got you the skull-and-bees mug." She gave him a worried look. "If I'd known you were giving me another present––"

"Molly, you've given me so much for the past decade," he interrupted with a chuckle and an eye-roll. "These trinkets can't even begin to repay you for everything you've done for me. And the mug is absolutely perfect."

"Sherlock, you don't need to repay me for anything. I did things for you because you're my friend and I care about you. I've never expected anything in return. Well, a 'thank you' or some other kind of appreciation every now and then would be nice, but that's it."

"I know." He gestured towards the box. "Why aren't you opening it?"

She worried her bottom lip and stared at the box. She glanced up at him and giggled. "Oh, all right," she said before removing a scalpel from her handbag. She slid the bow off the box and carefully cut through the wrapping paper until she caught a glimpse of something dark and velvety. She tore the rest of the shiny red paper, uncovering a dark blue velvet box. Glancing at Sherlock, whose anxious eyes met her eager ones, she took a deep breath as she slowly opened the box. Her jaw dropped as she stared at the glittering diamond ring. She admired the sparkling princess-cut solitaire diamond, the side accents of equally beautiful diamonds, and the magnificent platinum setting. She took the ring with trembling fingers, letting the box drop to her lap, and met Sherlock's gaze. "You don't have to keep apologising for that Christmas party all those years ago, you know?"

Giving her free hand a gentle squeeze, he softly laughed. "No, of course not." He leant forward until there was only a hair's breadth between their noses and rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand. "I _am_ hoping, though," he began in a low voice, so that she would be the only one to hear him, "that you would agree to be my wife." He flattened his lips together and looked down at their joined hands.

She recovered her ability to speak before he could continue. "I… I thought you didn't want to get married?"

He lifted his head and stared intently at her. "I did not. But that was before we almost lost Mary and before I thought I'd lost _you_. On the way back from Musgrave Hall, I realised that not only did I really mean it but that I also want to spend the rest of my life with you." He grinned at the surprise in her wide eyes. "In fact, I bought this ring en route to your flat when I came to talk to you about that phone call. I was going to propose the moment we exchanged I-love-yous without my sister's interference, but the John and Mary in my Mind Palace warned me that it was way too soon."

"They were right," she replied in a quiet voice. "And you've been waiting for, what, eight months?"

"Yeah. Eight months, 15 days, 16 hours, 23 minutes, and 42 seconds, to be precise. So you can probably understand why I couldn't wait to get in your flat before I asked you to marry me."

"Yeah, yeah, of course. I'm surprised you didn't propose to me in my office!"

Chuckling, he released her hand and gently took the ring from her other hand. He gazed at her with the tenderest and most loving expression in his eyes. "So… Margaret Elizabeth Julianne Hooper, will you marry me?"

But before she could answer, the cab stopped and the cabbie turned to them. "We 'ere."

Sherlock groaned in disbelief and irritation. "Really?!"

But Molly only sighed and, with a laugh, patted his hand. "It's all right, Sherlock. Why don't you pay the nice cabbie so we can continue this inside?" she suggested before giving her boyfriend a peck on his cheek. She thanked the cabbie while hastily stuffing the pieces of wrapping paper into her handbag. Holding the ring box in her hand, she exited the vehicle.

As she waited for Sherlock at the kerb, she looked round and realised that it had started snowing. She had never been so happy to feel the snow fall on her hair and coat before. So she laughed as she twirled around, not caring if she looked so silly enjoying the snow. She let out a small gasp when she stopped and found Sherlock kneeling down on the pavement on one knee.

He ignored the nosy children playing nearby as he held the ring towards her. "As I was saying… Molly Hooper, will you marry me?"

She grinned and nodded her head a few times. "Yes," she replied with a laugh. "Of course I will, yes!"

Smiling back, he slipped the ring onto her finger. He stood up and opened his mouth.

Before he could say anything, she grabbed his blue scarf and pulled him towards her. She smiled up at him as he wrapped his arm round her waist. "I love you," she whispered before pressing her lips to his.

"I love you," he panted when she released him a minute later. He gave her a sexy smirk. "What do you say to ordering Thai and making love in front of your fireplace?"

"Sounds good." She gave him another peck on the lips before taking his hand. "We should get inside soon. And by 'soon,' I mean 'now'. I can hear Toby crying."

"Perhaps we should move the New Year's Eve dinner party here," he said as she led him to her front door. "And how do you feel about inviting my parents and Mycroft and Lady Smallwood to the party?"

"Mary and Mrs Hudson already did," she replied, smiling as she unlocked the door. "Thinking of announcing the engagement to our dearest friends and your family on New Year's Eve, are we?"

"Actually, yes. I'd also love to find out who won the 'when are Sherlock and Molly getting engaged' pool. I know there's one. I overheard Lestrade and Hopkins talking about it a couple of months ago."

Not even the least bit surprised that he knew about the pool, Molly smiled to herself. "I think it's Mary. Or your mum. Or Mycroft. It might be me? I'll check the spreadsheet later," she replied before greeting Toby and heading to the kitchen, leaving Sherlock with a shocked face in her front hall.

* * *

 _I don't know why my brain decided to throw in as many references to a certain series as I could. Maybe because a certain streaming service is taking it off in 2018? *shrugs* Who can list all of them? *wink wink*_

 _BTW, the engagement ring is a milgrain solitaire princess-cut diamond engagement ring in platinum designed by Monique Lhuillier that I customized on ._

 _Hope y'all have a great Christmas if y'all celebrate it or a great holiday week if y'all don't!_

 _So what do y'all think? Hate it? Like it? Love it?_


End file.
